Subject: dead bury the dead? |
Bible Note: Ed, I respect what you have posted regarding the use of extra-biblical materials to enhance one's understanding of Scripture, and likewise respect the views of Simchat Torah. While I accept Scripture as the inerrant word of God and believe it is its own best interpreter, this does not militate against the desirability, even the necessity, of seeking in extra-biblical sources as much light as they are able to shed on various topics that are treated of in Scripture. First, let's consider the biblical texts themselves. The autographs, no longer extant, were all of them written in ancient tongues, and all the extant manuscripts, whose source is the autographs, are written in the same ancient tongues, mainly Hebrew and koine Greek. It is the job of translators to render from these ancient tongues God's message so that it becomes intelligible to peoples who do not know Hebrew or Greek, English-speaking peoples, for example. When I studied Latin in school, the course did not confine itself merely to the study of the classical language itself. It included a great deal of material about Roman culture, public and private life, customs, geography, government, religious beliefs -- the list was extensive. Why? Because language does not exist in a vacuum. It is born from the rich soil of human experience, formed and colored and given meaning by the people and the ambient forces that help to shape their lives and give them identity as a people..... So what is true of Latin is no less true of Hebrew and Greek. The more the translator knows of the times, the geography, the culture, the private and public lives of the people for whom the language he is concerned with was their native, everyday speech, the better equipped is he to understand the idiom, the nuance, the subtleties of their language and to translate it accurately and fully into the receptor language. Similiarly, even we who read Scripture only in English, are better able to understand and appreciate it if we broaden the areas of our awareness of the ancient world and peoples of Bible times by extra-biblical background study. --Hank |